A Week In The Life of Carlos Garcia
by JanetBanana
Summary: Character study on Carlos. Slash pairing.


This is the prompt I claimed for the Harvestfest challenge over on LJ. The prompt was: _Carlos centric. Carlos isn't serious, he's goofy and a dork and makes everyone laugh. I want a character study on Carlitos, because we've seen enough of him to know that beneath all that ridiculousness there's a lot more than just a goofball. Feel free to include pairings in this one. _So as you can see, I did include a pairing because I figure any character study on a teenage/young adult involves a pairing or the want for a pairing. XD

**A Week In The Life of Carlos Garcia**

* * *

><p>"Carlos! Carlos, wake up!" The sleep in my eyes made my vision upon wrenching them open bleary, but I'm pretty sure it was James I was peering up at from under my mountains of covers. He was my roommate, after all. Even though we were on the road, we usually kept to our usual assignments. We'd thought switching up would be a good idea at first, as we sometimes get tired of our usual roommates, but Kendall says I snore too loud, Logan says James and I stay up too late, and Kendall has terrible taste in late night made-for-tv movies.<p>

"What, James? It's still dark outside and I'm pretty sure we don't have to be up until nine." I whined.

"I know, you've gotta see this!" James is an insomniac, another reason I roomed with him. I could sleep through anything, including James' late night songwriting and haircare product googling. Although I still hadn't managed to sleep through him waking me up.

I sat up and attempted to remove enough goop from my eyes to see properly, as seeing was what I'd been asked to do. We were in Juneau, Alaska. I didn't see anything out of the ordinary in our room, and I figured James would have to be a total nut to wake me up to show me that the room came equipped with a fancy hairdryer or something. Not that James was above doing something that nutty, of course. "What is it, James, the room seems fairly normal to me." I hadn't had time to notice anything unusual when we checked in, because I'd been feeling less than 100%, so I had fallen pretty much straight into bed, I _could_ have easily missed something cool.

"Come over here, to the window." I wondered what was out there, we were at the airport hotel, so there wasn't much of a view, at least not right now, as planes don't tend to fly in and out at quarter after two in the morning.

I shuffled over to the window, cracking some joints and making James cringe in the process, and looked out. "Oh, wow!" It was Aurora Borealis, or in lay mens terms, the Northern Lights. Logan would be so proud I'd actually learned the real name. It was unlike anything I'd ever seen. Speaking of Logan, he'd absolutely die if he learned he missed this.

"We have to tell Logan!" Our room adjoined with theirs, and I knew Kendall might still be awake texting Jo in New Zealand, so I knocked on the connecting door. He opened it a few minutes later, and I said, "Logan has to see this!"

"Wait, what about me? What is it?" he asked, annoyed I'd knocked for the boy who would definitely be sleeping. You'd think James would be the one who insisted on beauty sleep, but it was Doctor Logan who crawled into bed at least seven and a half hours before wake-up call as often as humanly possible.

"Logan will kill us if we don't show him. It's only one of those astronomical things he never shuts up about." Kendall goes to look, seeming duly impressed. I busied myself waking the sleeping boy genius while attempting to not get hit; Logan swings when people wake him up in the middle of the night.

"What the hell are you doing, Carlos? It's" he quickly checks the clock "almost 2:30 in the morning."

"We fly out tomorrow, so if you want to see this you have to do it now. And I know you don't want to miss Aurora Borealis."

Logan's face shifts quickly from annoyed to excited, and he races to the window. Yep, totally worth dodging a couple of upper cuts. He then starts blabbering excitedly, while the rest of us look out the window. It didn't take long for me to get sleepy again though, so I headed back to the mountain of covers and contemplated a couple of the things that keep me up at night before drifting off again until morning.

* * *

><p>We'd gotten home a few days later. Camille, of course, was there with open arms and an update on all the stuff that had happened while we were gone.<p>

"The Jennifers landed a very ironic role as a three-headed cyborg. Oh, and Carlos, I think you'll be interested in this. Sasha moved into the Palmwoods!"

"Seriously? Which apartment is hers?" I reacted excitedly, but I didn't exactly feel excited. I felt more conflicted. I had dumped Sasha and told her it was because she didn't like corndogs, but I wasn't truly that shallow.

I'd been having feelings for a close friend. A very close friend. Like, the next bed over close. It was all kinds of weird. I mean, yeah, so he was a guy. But also, we shared a room. And lets say I got past all the other weird stuff and he was cool with it and we dated. Wouldn't that terribly damage our relationships with Kendall and Logan? Which, okay, that would screw with the band. But we were more than a band, we were best friends. We'd been a foursome forever.

Maybe if we all went away to different colleges and lived apart for a few years we'd all grow apart and the dynamic would be different anyway. But even before the band we'd all planned to go to Minnesota State. Some of our plans were more firm than others, of course: Kendall was going to be center forward for the Gophers and Logan was going to be pre-med, there had been no question about that. James might have ventured out to some super elite Minnesota private university; if his mother was going to insist on a proper education, she could pay for him to have it all, because otherwise he was going to forget about college and go to LA to become a popstar-model. I had secretly dreamed of a career as a comic book writer. If I couldn't actually be a superhero, I could create the worlds of the superheroes. But I'd not given much thought to college before the band, aside from frat parties and maybe rooming with one of the guys, if we did end up together.

Big Time Rush was a game changer for all of us in such different ways. I was still weeks from my fifteenth birthday when we went to the audition. It was probably lucky that Logan was nearly sixteen, along with Kendall, and that James looked older than he was. If I'd become a singer by myself, I'm almost positive I'd be getting the Bieber treatment by adults. You know, that guy was sixteen when "Baby" became a hit, and people seriously thought he was twelve. And treated him as such. So they got me a lot of respect. Especially in the beginning.

* * *

><p>What a day. James and I had had one hell of a fight. It was petty and stupid at first but then it escalated. And then he called me a child and that is pretty much all it takes to make me shut down. I don't even know what I did to provoke such a thing! I take it really personally because everyone at the Palmwoods treats me that way and it can't be for crazy hijinks, everyone at the Palmwoods is involved in those! I've always thought it's because I hang out with Katie without Kendall. In the past no one in apartment 2J has ever said it to me before. Kendall and Logan had been trying to calm us down when it happened. Kendall got really aggressive with James after that, and Logan whisked me away to my room and tried to get me to talk about it. But since Logan's comforting techniques usually involve giving someone their favorite childhood toy, like a stuffed animal (we all had them, high up on shelves) and asking them to talk about it, it just made me even more upset, even though it's pretty much his standard practice. I threw it at James' shelf full of haircare products and smiled when they all fell off.<p>

"Carlos, he didn't mean it." Logan tried.

"Of course he meant it. If he didn't mean it he wouldn't have said it, and even if he didn't mean it, _you_ can't be taking back things he said, especially when I know you didn't have time to talk to him about it." If James thought I was a child it meant all the work I'd been doing to act as maturely on the outside as I knew I was on the inside had failed. And I thought he was my best friend! Logan and Kendall were also my best friends, but James was my number one.

"It was just in the heat of the moment, Carlos." Logan tried again.

"Look, I thought there was some kind of agreement around here that no matter what, no one in this apartment called me that. If he's going to that sort of trouble, he must know the rest of you would get mad at him for it. And still said it anyway." Logan wasn't very good at this. But he couldn't be, he has no argument.

"Carlos, if I don't know his motives, you don't either."

"His motives were to let me know he sees me as a child. Obviously." I got up and started reorganizing James' haircare products, because knocking them off was petty, and well, childish. He didn't need real ammunition. Since getting to my room I'd sent a couple of text messages to Lucy, who thankfully had never treated me as if she thought I was a child. And when you consider the silly competition James and I went through over her when she arrived, it's a wonder she became friends with us at all. I finally got the text I was looking for and started packing a bag.

"What are you doing?"

"Staying at Lucy's. Her couch folds out."

"Carlos, that's ridiculous! If anyone should be sleeping on a couch tonight, it's James!"

"Well, I agree. But let's look at it this way. He's not going to. He'll refuse. I'm not staying in this room with him. And once all is said and done, who got to sleep at the apartment of the pretty girl? Not James, who thinks he's God's gift to women, but me, the _child._"

"Carlos..." Logan said, but he clearly didn't know where to go with it.

"Yes?"

"Sleep well."

"Thank you."

* * *

><p>When Lucy answered the door she wanted me to talk about it. She's a lot like Logan that way. But she's a girl, so she shoved a plate with a sandwich and some chips and cookies in my hand and a glass of milk. And considering I just walked out on my opportunity to eat supper, it was a really nice of her. But I made it clear I was all talked out, so we watched some tv and then she went to her room.<p>

* * *

><p>This morning I woke up to 17 missed calls and text messages. Some from last night and some from this morning. Three Logan, one each from each Knight, one each from Gustavo and Kelly (because BTR has this weird "they call whenever they want to and we come running" schedule with them) and nine from James. After checking that the bossman didn't need me immediately, I called Mama Knight because I figured she was worried and she would respect my feelings.<p>

"Carlos, I'm so glad you called me. Logan told me what happened. You really need to let me know when you are not sleeping here! I was worried!"

"I'm sorry Mrs. Knight. I just left in a hurry and you weren't home. I should have called you. Please forgive me!"

"Of course. But you'll have to do a couple of loads of laundry and scrub the shower. Your parents trust me to take care of you and I can't do that if I don't know where you are."

"Yes ma'am."

I returned Logan's texts, all of which wanted to talk about it more, by simply refusing.

Katie told me James and I were both being stupid, so I agreed with her, because running away from the situation, after sleeping on it, _was_ a bad idea.

Kendall's message told me about the beatdown he gave James, and then said "but I really think you need to talk to him because we're a band and best friends and you two are roommates, so this isn't going anywhere good if you don't." I agreed, even though I didn't really want to yet.

I ignored James and called Kelly.

"Hey Carlos. Gustavo wants you here at 3:15."

"I know. James and I had a fight. And I really don't want to see him. This is individual recording, right?"

"...yes it is. Why are you fighting with James?"

"He called me a child. A _child_, Kelly. And totally unprovoked, so I guess that's just how he thinks of me. And I thought he was my best friend! What 17 year old is best friends with a child, anyway? I just...ugh!"

"Maybe he said it more for his benefit than yours?"

"You know Kelly, I know you and Mrs. Knight are my go-to advice people because adults tend to be more rational than teenagers, and the two of you are more rational than Buddha Bob, Bitters, and Gustavo, but I don't get this one at all."

"Logan called me. Said right before he called you that you told him you had a date with a girl he'd been chasing."

"I didn't know he liked her! I didn't even know he _knew_ her!"

"I know. Maybe if he called you a child he really wanted _her _to think you were a child so she would go out with him."

"Have you _seen_ the way he treats women? Do you remember that time we had those Pop Tiger dates? If a girl is going to see anyone as a child, it's going to be him."

"So maybe he was trying to convince himself."

"...right."

"Oh just talk to him!"

"Thanks, Kelly."

"Of course."

* * *

><p>I made and folded up Lucy's sofabed and packed my stuff. Then I brushed my teeth and left her a thank you note. She had a very late set so she wasn't waking up until around noon.<p>

I then trudged very slowly towards 2J. The walk that had taken me thirty seconds to complete last night was now taking about four minutes on the return journey, and that's just because we lived so close I couldn't really make it go on any longer. When I got there the only people home were Logan, James, and Katie.

"Well, Tyler just called and we're going swimming." Katie announced, as if I couldn't tell she was making an excuse to leave me alone with James. I knew Logan would either get lost or try to mediate.

"Carlos." James said.

"James." I brought my bag upstairs, and because I didn't feel like waiting for Logan and James to follow me upstairs and refuse to leave me alone until things got resolved, I came back downstairs. I stretched my legs out on the couch because my night was restless and I was still pretty tired, and waited for someone to talk.

"Logan, can you go?" James said. That surprised me, really. I figured he'd let Logan step in if I got angry and try to calm me down, which is why he's useful to have around in other people's arguments, but Logan didn't argue.

"Sure. I'm going to meet Kendall and Camille down at the park if you need me."

"Thanks." Once Logan left, James sat in the armchair and swiveled it so he was facing me.

"I'm sorry. So, so very sorry, Carlos."

"If you really felt that bad about it, you wouldn't have said it to begin with, James."

"I've said a lot of mean things to you in the past couple of months haven't I? Not just yesterday."

"Yeah you have. It hurts. I know we're teenagers and hormonal and we're supposed to fight and all, but you're my best friend. I don't feel like I can trust you sometimes."

"I'm sorry. You got the hormonal part right. I guess it's easier to say mean things to you than to be honest with myself."

"What are you talking about?"

"After Logan talked to you and you left, he talked to me. And I guess since I like to lie to myself but I'm not very good at hiding things, he sees things I can't admit."

"What things?"

"I say mean things to you to avoid saying nice things to you."

"Right. And I do things with negative consequences to avoid doing things with positive consequences all the time. Try again?"

"I mean it. Saying nice things like how you give like a quarter of the effort in the gym than I do to get twice the results. Or how your eyes sparkle when other people are happy because you are so selfless. Or how tiny little things make you smile and I don't think you even realize it. Bottom line, Carlos, when I criticize you it's because I am avoiding kissing you."

"You want to kiss me?" I really didn't see that coming. Now I didn't know how to respond. I mean, obviously I want to kiss him too, but what about Kendall and Logan? I don't want this to wreck our friendship. Plus what if James and I don't last? Then how long will I be stuck on Lucy's couch?

But now I realize James must have thought of all this and still told me. So then if I keep worrying about that stuff we're just going to be stuck at this weird standstill forever and that'll be worse than a fight. It'll be awkward, and growing worse by the hour.

"Screw it." I stood up and grabbed James by each arm and pulled him up, and kissed him.

It was definitely worth it.


End file.
